I recently read a post about bravery in regards to IBD.
The bravery of spouses who stand by their significant other while they go through treatments and suffering, the doctors who tirelessly research on the behalf of patients, the doctors who listen and thoroughly explain what is happening and what the options are, but they also mentioned those who still get up and go to work and move on with their lives despite illness.
All of those people ARE incredibly brave. I admire all of those people.
To be fair, I just want to add a few more! I admire anyone with IBD, anyone surrounded by close friends and family with IBD, people who can work, people who cannot work, basically anyone with this disease.
I know that their statement was not intentionally leaving out people who cannot work or who are incapable of getting themselves outside. Those sufferers, however, are not always labeled as 'brave'. It is not the standard definition of strength and bravery. Even when I first had to stop working, I felt very ashamed, like I had given up; given in.
That is, however, not the case at all.
Anyone with IBD has a life that is ever-changing, complicated, unpredictable, painful, and all of these people have capabilities and things taken away from them starting at a young age (usually) and continuing throughout their lives.
Those who have IBD and stay in their basement for months at a time, forcing themselves to eat, refusing to shower or go any more than 5 feet from a washroom...
They are brave too. Sometimes they are fighting their desire to leave this world entirely. They want to curl up and disappear, but they stay here. Maybe they have the courage to play video games. Maybe they have to courage to be involved on social media - even just reading about everyone else's lives. They have the courage to keep eating and drinking. Some may believe these people have given up - but not yet. If they are even awake for part of every day, they have not given up yet.
People who are sick and who can no longer work, who finally admit to themselves that working is making them so much sicker that they cannot enjoy life, people who fought and fought for years at jobs and tried to hide what it was doing to them...
They are brave too. They are brave to face the scrutiny and the assumptions and the stereotype. They are brave to admit that their bodies have some control over them and they do not have ultimate power over malfunctions of their bodies. They realize how miserable it is to keep doing something for society at the cost of their health. These are people who have dug down deep and reached or even surpassed their potential - people who worked above their limitations for so long until it became physically impossible. These people often continue to include other activities in their lives - hobbies, small jobs, volunteering, participating in fundraisers, helping others. People who are forced to stop working are brave to face the stigma and to modify their entire lives because of a disease they cannot control.
As much as I do not agree with the next example, nor condone it, I also do not think it is fair to look at someone with severe disease who attempts/commits suicide as 'weak'. We all have a threshold. We all have a breaking point. Many of us will never reach that breaking point - but it is different for each and every one of us.
In a sense, yes, I could call these people brave. To be that lost, in that much pain, and that certain of the misery and unbearable agony, that they would prefer to do something so absolutely final, of their own accord, that is a whole different kind of bravery. To willingly eliminate a future - eliminate all possibility of any future - to truly believe that death is better than the life they were given, most of us could not even imagine that kind of mindset. As a side note, how many people choose to sign a DNR, preferring to only be kept alive without the use of machines? Is that decision widely viewed as being 'weak'? No...
We have labeled those kinds of thoughts and attitudes, on a regular basis, as 'mental illness' - that if you are that constantly unhappy, that it is more due to kind of a faulty wiring than anything else. So, could you imagine someone who is in that much pain - without having 'faulty wiring' or Depression or mental illness or anything psychologically predisposing - someone who is simply in so much pain that they would rather die.
That is a mindset I would never wish on any other person. Ever.
The truth - the frightening truth - is that there is no such thing as Giving Up when you have a persistent disease like IBD. You can't simply ignore it or pretend it isn't there. I mean, you CAN, for other people, but if you have it, you cannot 'ignore' the pain. You can grin and bear it. You can choose to pretend it doesn't exist and live how you want with no thought to how it may affect your health. You can, alternatively, let it run your life. You can let it ruin your life. You can stay holed up in your home and let the outside world pass you by. You can numb yourself. You can move through your life like water - finding your way through or around obstacles, you can be versatile and modify your expectations based on symptom levels. You can choose to end all of it - the good and the bad.
Whatever you decide to do... whatever way(s) you choose at different times in your life, if you live with IBD at all (or if you love friends with IBD, or are engaged to someone with IBD ), take care of people with IBD, research IBD, treat patients with IBD, help volunteer and go to fundraisers for IBD, you are all brave.
And that goes for the vast majority of illnesses, if not all.
We are all brave, in our own way.